The Luftek Natural Hair System Claim

The system is said to reverse the cause of baldness through relaxation, meditation and a method which creates a positive pressure beneath the scalp to loosen the skin, increase circulation, open the pores and allow hair to grow.

Lou claims his method can ‘stop hair loss within three to four weeks, with hair growth taking place from six months to three years, depending on a person’s dedication’.

Note: As at time of writing I can no longer find a retailer for The Luftek Natural Hair system (trademarked as “Use Your Head to Grow Hair”®).

How It Works

The treatment is based on the premise that hair loss is a result of the tightening of the scalp causing constriction and poor circulation. This tightening occurs as a result of negative emotions such as anger and worry which causes physical tension in our bodies, including the scalp. There are two key elements to the technique:

20 minutes of meditation practiced each day to create a feeling of ‘calm, peaceful, joy’, thereby directly addressing the negative emotions which lead to scalp tension.

You’ll find it hard to achieve success through the second technique without having first achieved it in the first. Depending on your stress levels this can require almost constant vigilance to ensure that everyday stressors don’t compromise your desired emotional state. The requirement to monitor and control your emotions is by far the greatest challenge to achieving promised results.

Side Effects

Inner peace, man.

Best Suited For

Those with a low stress life, are able to change their lifestyle to significantly reduce their stressors, or are blessed with an ability to control their emotional state.

I’m guessing there’ll be maybe only 1 or 2% of the population who could relax their scalp to the extent, and for the period, required to see (and maintain) the promised results. That said, biofeedback techniques may help you develop this skill.

Approximate Cost Per Annum

One-off, upfront cost of USD $197 (inc. S&H) for the home treatment kit (when it was available).

What You Get

The kit consists of a 53-minute cd-rom, supplementary booklet, a biofeedback sensor and online support.

The cd-rom and booklet explain the meditation technique and method for creating positive pressure under the scalp. The biofeedback sensor is a ‘credit-card sized’ device which, when held, indicates your current level of stress as a prompt to reassert your calm. The online support consisted of personal assistance direct from Lou via e-mail.

]If you’re keen to try the technique there is enough information freely available on the web to piece the method together. I’m also happy to share further details with anyone interested in pursuing this avenue. Clearly, the online support won’t be available.

Pros

If you like your treatments natural, non-invasive and private, they don’t fit the bill much better than this. There is also significant anecdotal evidence which suggests a link between scalp tension and hair loss.

You may have observed the upper portion of the forehead in Male Pattern Baldness (MPB) sufferers appears fixed and will often drain of colour as the person raises their eyebrows. Equally, you’ll have noticed that people with an abundance of hair have ‘forehead expression lines’ that can crease almost up to their hairline. They also often have noticeable movement in the hair bed – moving towards the front of the head as the eyebrows are raised and settling back into position once the eyebrows are lowered.

The Luftek Natural Hair system is intended to assist you in achieving a similar level of scalp elasticity.

Cons

The scalp tension theory is far from proven and has been dismissed as a fundamental cause of hair loss by most specialists. Although there is undoubtedly a positive correlation between a tight scalp and hair loss, correlation does not necessarily mean causation.

Depending on your personality, and your personal circumstances, you may need to spend almost every waking minute mitigating the innumerable stress triggers which arise during the course of a standard day.

For those intrigued by the idea, the biggest negative is undoubtedly product unavailability. I searched high and low and couldn’t find a way to purchase it as at May 2013.

My Experience

This was one of the first techniques I tried back in 1999 / 2000. At the time the theory behind the program was appealing – there is no doubt in my mind that I have a tight scalp. My hair bed moves rather less fluidly than that of my well-endowed hairy friends.

At one point I did manage to achieve the degree of scalp elasticity that I believe Lou was describing. When I raised my eyebrows it felt like I was creating a wave under my hair! However I only managed to achieve this state for about two weeks before life overtook me. A high-stress job, a wife and kids (not to mention the in-laws) will do that to you.

As far as ‘mastering’ the technique was concerned, Lou was also always very responsive to my questions. That said, his answers were typically vague since the meditation practice itself, although very straightforward, is highly experiential and often particular to the individual. Guidelines can be easily provided but I found instruction regarding one’s personal journey difficult over e-mail.

Substitute Treatments

Given Lou’s program is no longer available you may wish to explore other methods for achieving the same outcome. As it wasn’t exactly revolutionary – essentially a combination of established techniques applied to hair loss – this may not be that hard to do.

There was no particular science behind Lou’s meditation video, other than that you couple the meditation practice with step 2 under the ‘How It Works Section’ to ensure the scalp ‘floats’. You can find good explanations on simple meditation techniques here and some good guided meditation programs here.

The other key area of focus should be on using biofeedback to ensure you can maintain the ‘floating scalp’ sensation. Understanding your stressors (triggers), as well as appropriate personalised responses to mitigate those stressors are key to achieving this, both in and outside of your meditation sessions. Each of these activities potentiates the other.

There are extremely sophisticated (and costly) biofeedback methods involving sessions with medical and psychology professionals as well as sophisticated equipment such as real-time EEG (electroencephalography) displays. Luckily, there are also much cheaper methods that can be used in the comfort of your own home … or taken with you wherever you go.

These range from the simple, to the more sophisticated. I can recommend the following, ordered from lowest to highest cost (and sophistication):

At the sophisticated end of the spectrum the Wild Divine computer ‘game’ (but it aint cheap)

Bottom line

The Luftek Natural Hair System didn’t work for me. I used the technique for almost 18 months and whilst I recall briefly thinking my hair loss had slowed, it was short-lived, and likely coincidental. It was virtually impossible to maintain the required level of relaxation throughout a normal day. Unless you’re a monk (strange how most of those guys are bald!), or manage to master the biofeedback technique, I suspect you’ll have a similar experience. That said, the only ill-effects from giving it a go is greater calm.

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I may have misinterpreted your meaning here but the idea of the Luftek system is a lack of effort. ‘Giving it your all’ sounds counter-productive i.e. like effort. That said, the objective of the system is to achieve a looser scalp and it sounds like that’s occurring. Does it feel like a wave – I mean really fluid – when you raise your eyebrows? That’s chilled-scalp-Nirvana, apparently.

I bought the Luftek product in 2003. In 10 long years I haven’t regrown a single hair. But I never doubted that it “could” work, but only it wasn’t working for me. Like you say it was too difficult a method. But there has never been before and after photos of a single person claiming to grow hair with that technique, save Lou himself. Lou is dead now so his technique is no longer copyright. It shouldn’t have been copyright in the first place, for telling us to meditate twice daily, keeping a slight smile and to puff the cheeks and lips often. That’s all there is in the Luftek system. He claimed that keeping a slight smile always will relax the cheeks and travel up to the scalp. I doubt it works that easily for everyone despite smiling always. I believe the same effect could be achieved by Tom Hagherty’s scalp exercise in an easier manner. But Tom doesn’t claim a high success rate for this technique, and it is also free.
Lastly, I found recently that instead of puffing away air like Lou said, it seems more effective if we retain the puffed cheek. Hypothetically if one could somehow retain air in the cheeks like this while sleeping (which is impossible as we it will escape through the lips or the throat) I think it will loosen the scalp like Lou said and regrow hair. I do think puffed cheek is more effective manner than smiling all day, and can work hand in hand with Tom’s scalp exercise.

Agree completely. As you say, the puffing of the cheeks is likely more effective than the slight smile, but difficult to sustain. For me, I also found that by focusing on relaxing the front of the scalp, and down the side of the temples, my scalp would loosen more than from any other approach. Ultimately, it’s about finding what works best for the individual to achieve the ultimate outcome – a loose, floating scalp.

One just has to question why men who are bald never lose the hair that runs around the back and the sides of the head. Furthermore, when those hairs are removed and transplanted to the top of the head they grow thick and healthy for the remainder of that man’s life. Hair transplants prove that constriction does not cause baldness.

The vibe I got from talking to Lou Gauthier is that his company was always floundering and that the majority of his customers were sending the product back for the refund.

It didn’t work for me. And when I commit myself to something I give it 100%. My scalp did get nice and loose, but no hair ever grew. I took pictures every two months and nothing was happening.

Lou passed away a few years ago and the company died with him, nobody picked up the mantle. I can’t find a single person on the Internet who even talks about it or ever grew a single hair with it. It seems Lou was the only one who ever grew hair.

Lou always claimed a 96% success rate, that’s what always frustrated me. He made it sound so incredibly easy. I always felt like I was the only person that was failing with it. I highly doubt a 96% success rate.

I watched a wildlife programme recently and was struck how the monkeys / baboons were able to move their whole hair-bed at the top. It seemed to move back and fourth by about a centimetre in the way that the eyebrows can move giving the whole scalp a massage. What also strikes me is how monkeys and dogs wag tails all the time. It leads me to wonder whether stiffness at both ends, scalp and tail, is part of the problem. I have found that meditation can help in relaxing the tailbone.

I also took lessons in the Alexander Technique about 20 years ago. Combined with meditation I once had a nirvana experience and all the tension in my shoulders and neck released and I suppose I had a rush of hormones or endorphins to the scalp. If I could maintain that relaxation all the time then that may help hair growth.